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Spring 2017

Form in Tonal Music

Faculty

John D. McDonald (Section 01)

Description

A continuation of MUSI 241 and the second of the required music theory sequence for majors. In this course we will study different manifestations of formal principles, along with the relationship of form to harmony and tonality. We will start with pre-tonal music (through works by keyboard and vocal composers like Orlando Gibbons and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck), leading to a focus on the understanding of musical form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Topics to be covered will be addressed through short pieces, including Mozart minuets, Schubert dances, Copin/Paganini character pieces (mazurkas/caprices), Schumann-style lieder, and a variety of late nineteenth-century miniatures (including examples by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Janacek, and Scriabin). Sonata-like forms and contrapuntal techniques used in these works will also be confronted. The course requires in-class analyses and writing exercises that will support five model composition projects and/or analytic paper assignments related to the above-mentioned composers. All required composition and analysis work will grow from material contained in a supplied anthology. Two class meetings and two ear-training sections per week.